Variables

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What are variables?

Variables in Treble help store and display information in different parts of a conversation flow. Variables are useful when you want to:

• Display personalized information in a message. For example, you can display the customer’s name in a message.
• Save information to use in different parts of a conversation flow. For example, you can ask for customer information such as their identification number (ID, SSN, CPF, etc.), email, or age.
• Customize block behavior. For example, you can use a variable to determine whether a customer should be transferred to an agent or not.
• Use information obtained in variables and save it in your information system. For example, you can save the customer’s phone number in your information system so you can use it in your CRM.

Variables can be used in any type of conversation (inbound, outbound) and in any part of a conversation flow, including text blocks, option lists, and actions.

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Types of variables

There are two types of variables in Treble:

• Company customized variables: These are variables where you will define their value when deploying your conversation flow. These are variables where you have information prior to customer interaction. Some examples are your customer’s name, their last purchase date, or a customer’s account balance.
• Customer collected variables: These are variables that are configured to store information that the customer provides in your conversation flow. Some examples are: asking for the customer’s age, describing a problem the customer has, or asking for a customer’s address.

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Defining variables

Every variable has the same structure:

• Name: The variable name. We recommend using descriptive, short names in lowercase, without spaces, and without special characters so you can easily identify the purpose of the variable. Examples: customer_name, customer_age, customer_address.
• Format: The variable format. Every variable in Treble is defined using brackets: {{ }}, for example: {{customer_name}}.

To define a variable, you just need to add it in the block where you want to use it. For example, if you want to use the customer_name variable in a message, you just need to add it in the message.

In this case, the customer_name variable will be used in the welcome message. However, you can use as many variables as you need in a block:

In this case, we have the variables {{email}} and {{last_purchase_date}} in a block where we want to confirm the customer’s information.

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Example of creation and deployment with variables

Let’s say we have the following conversation flow where we are greeting the customer by name and then want to confirm that their information in the system, such as their email and last purchase date, is correct.

We clicked on Create conversation, we have the conversation created and now we want to deploy it to 3 customers using variables to personalize the messages. How do we do this?

First, we must have that information in the system. Let’s say we have the following information in our system:

As we saw in the

Deploy an outbound conversation

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Add users manually

We add the users’ information, one by one, in the Add users section. Here you will see text fields to add the users’ information one by one.

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Add users by uploading a CSV file

We upload a CSV file with the users’ information. In this case, the CSV file must have the following structure:

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Variables in templates (HSMs)

The way variables are defined in templates (HSMs) is identical to how they are defined in blocks. In templates, variables are also defined using the format {{variable_name}} and are created as part of the template content.

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Variables to get customer information

Perfect, we now know how to create variables in Treble and fill them with our information. But how can we get information from the customer?

To get information from the customer, we can access the advanced configuration of blocks to save the customer’s response as a variable. To do this, just double-click on the block where you want to save the customer’s response as a variable and then click on the Save response as variable button. Here you will see a field to add the variable name and you can choose the type of variable you want to save:

• Text: Saves the entire customer response as text.
• Number: Only saves the numerical part of the customer’s response. For example, if the customer responds “hello my number is: 12345”, the variable will save “12345”.
• Image: If the customer sends an image, the variable will save the image URL.
• Email: Saves the customer’s email. If the customer doesn’t provide an email, the variable will save an empty/null value.
• Video: Saves the URL of the customer’s video.
• Location: Saves the customer’s location by creating two variables: latitude and longitude.
• Postal code: Saves the customer’s postal code.
• Contact: Saves the customer’s phone number.

In this case, we saved the customer’s response to the welcome block as the variable help_type and specified that the variable type is TEXT.

Additionally, we can also configure the block to save the customer’s response as a variable when the block is an options list. In this case, the variable will be saved as the value of the option selected by the customer. In this case, the variable type will always be TEXT.

In this case, we saved the customer’s response to the options list block as the variable customer_resp.

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Using obtained variables

Now that we have saved the customer’s response as a variable, how can we use that information in our conversation flow? Since we have created the variables help_type and customer_resp, we can use these variables in any block of our conversation flow. We just need to add them in the block where we want to use the information with their format: {{help_type}} or {{customer_resp}}.

Note how:

• 🟡 {{help_type}} is used in the welcome block to show the customer’s response. Represented by the yellow arrow.
• 🟢 {{customer_resp}} is used in the options list block to show the customer’s response. Represented by the green arrow.
• 🔴 {{customer_name}} we use this variable again in the next block to show the customer’s name. We will fill this variable with information from our information system.

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Next steps